William Blake

I have never done exceptionally well when attempting to decipher the meaning a poet has hidden in his lines and stanzas. William Blake’s poems were very difficult for me to understand until I had read over them multiple times. I really enjoyed how Blake would use the same poems in the each section such as the “The Chimney Sweeper.” The poems each had a separate meaning which was shown by putting them in opposite sections one being the “Songs of Innocence” and the “Songs of Experience.”
As I read the background information on the “Songs of Innocence and Experience” a few of the lines really stuck out to me:

“Childhood is a time and state of protected ‘innocence,’ but it is a qualified innocence, not immune to the fallen world and institutions… ‘experience,’a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling class.” (77)

This theme reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye in which Holden believes that children are innocent and attempts to keep them from finding about the cruelties and “phoniness.”

Earlier I mentioned that Blake used several of his poems in both sections and believe this is so we can get a better understanding and see the differences much easier. For example, “The Divine Image” is used in both sections. In the Songs of Innocence section, the “Divine Image” is peaceful and full words that bring joy. The third stanza reads:

“For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine
And Peace, the human dress.” (82)

It is explained that every man prays to these “virtues of delight” in times of distress because these virtues represent “God our father dear” but that while each man is praying to this God they also “pray to the human form divine” that is explained in third stanza. In the Songs of Experience section, the “Divine Image” is aggressive and the choice of words are dark and hateful. The first stanza reads:

“Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress” (93)

While in the Songs of Innocence the “virtues of delight” represented God and a human form divine, in the Songs of Experience these virtues are not delightful but rather miserable. It is almost that Blake wrote this because he wanted to express how man’s heart and soul are dark and cold. It seems that the human that Blake writes about in these stanzas has become tainted by his experience and that mankind is degrading.